January 2009 saw Horizon head up to Santo for a two week charter on Ratu Island, one of Santo’s newest resorts. After a hectic Christmas period, Michelle, Charles and Paul decided to bring Horizon home after her charter with Charlie and James and take a short fishing break.
The weather was superb and allowed us to fish off Santo for the first day mooring at Bokissa Island that night. This day Paul tagged and released his first Blue Marlin. The second day saw us head South to fish the rich waters off Malakula. We encoutered some rather large Yellowfin Tuna and Charles tipped the scales with a nice fin around the 70kg mark. We anchored at Port Sandwich at Malakula which is a large river with amazing scenary. Wednesday morning was an early start to encounter some large Dogtooth Tuna at the southern end of Malakula. Michelle encoutered some large doggies only to pull the hooks. We landed two nice doggies around the 20kg mark and landed a couple of Wahoo as well. We then trolled down to Cooks Reef and anchored off Emae Island for the night.
Thursday was also an early start as we had to make the passage between the islands where the currents meet. Here we encoutered some nice blue marlin as well with Michelle tagging a Blue around the 100kg mark and Paul tagging another blue around the 200kg mark. We also raised another two for the day and landed a couple of nice Mahi Mahi for dinner as well. We overnighted at Havanna Harbour. Charles decided that we would try for a Ladies 10Kg record. After trolling for approximately two hours, we raised the perfect fish for 10Kg around the 80Kg mark. The bite was perfect and after ten minutes, we had the leader at the back of the boat and just out of gaff range, then Michelle broke her rod! After the fish dissappeared into the blue yonder with the rod tip, we managed to get the fish up again after 30 minutes only to have the line part.
The trip was a wonderful fishing experience with many of the islands accessible to fish and we managed to get amoungst a wide variety of fish as well.